January 2017 - Daz 3D New User Challenge - Composition

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    daybird said:

    First of all, thank you for the suggestions and tips.
    I try to do it as best as possible, but much does not work quite as I would, because I lack the necessary experience and the knowledge.
    I have reduced the light of the lamp. (I did not want to omit them.)
    Also, I tried to fill the empty space on the top left, without distracting from the main figure.
    In addition, I have inserted various small things to give the picture more life and dynamics.
    I am still testing various light and camera settings and I am looking for a perfect relationship between light and dark.
    I'm really envious of people who can eliminate all the annoying things with postwork.
    Since I am not at all aware of this, I try to create many things in DAZ and fail, because of lack of knowledge, often miserable.

     

    I realise it’s meant to be a dark scene but I still think you could get a little more light on your figure. The black outfit she is wearing lacks detail and she blends a lot with the background.

    I think you are doing well though! The scene is telling a story and though you may feel like you fail, you are adding/changing things as well as posting to get feedback from people. This is vital for learning and building on what you enjoy, even if you feel you lack the skill or experience to improve something quite in the way that you want. It’s important that you enjoy it and like the image you are creating, more than getting something 100% technically perfect.

    Also, it’s small detail in your picture, but I really like the moth you added to that lamp, a tiny witness to the carnage going on around :-)

  • yhzmurphyyhzmurphy Posts: 434
    edited January 2017

    Ok, this is not a step forward in composition, but had to be done.  I wasted most of the day creating my own ship for in the bottles - a schooner versus the pirate ships I had been using.  I think it takes away from the story, as there's no longer an empty bottle for the ship he's carving, but since I spent all that time on it, I had to render it and share it.

     

    shipBuilder6.jpg
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    Post edited by yhzmurphy on
  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548
    daybird said:

    First of all, thank you for the suggestions and tips.
    I try to do it as best as possible, but much does not work quite as I would, because I lack the necessary experience and the knowledge.
    I have reduced the light of the lamp. (I did not want to omit them.)
    Also, I tried to fill the empty space on the top left, without distracting from the main figure.
    In addition, I have inserted various small things to give the picture more life and dynamics.
    I am still testing various light and camera settings and I am looking for a perfect relationship between light and dark.
    I'm really envious of people who can eliminate all the annoying things with postwork.
    Since I am not at all aware of this, I try to create many things in DAZ and fail, because of lack of knowledge, often miserable.

     

    Don't worry you will improve every time you put together something.  Studio has a big learning curve, and the only way to really learn is by doing it.  You will be struggling along and then all of a sudden you go, "OHHHH now I get it!  and something will click and it will be easier.  Rinse and repeat lol.  A year from now, you will look back and be amazed at what you have learned and accomplished.

    As far as photoshopping goes, yes, I can fix a lot of things in photoshop because I already knew how to use at least the basics BUT, I always try and get as much right and get everything to as close to what I am aiming for in Studio first.  A. its a good learning experience and B.  Why post work it if you don't have to?  And C. you can learn to postwork when you are ready to learn it, no rush.  I didn't do any postwork to my images at all until I had been rendering in Studio for almost a year, because I wanted to learn everything I could and be comfortable using Studio on its own.  Because its far too easy to say, oh, i'll just postwork this or that.  But then you don't learn the fundamentals of Studio and I feel like I am short changing myself if I don't give my best effort to the program at least in the beginning.

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    Love that you made your own ship!

    yhzmurphy said:

    Well, I went back to the outside view, and fixed a few things, some minor tweaks, swapped the uncarved block for the ship (like I had done in the other view).  I also spent waaay too much time creating my own sailing ship to put in a bottle.   Now to crawl back inside the bottle...

     

  • yhzmurphyyhzmurphy Posts: 434
    edited January 2017

     

     

     

    Love that you made your own ship!

     

    Well, not sure how much I love the ship - it's the schooner in the second render I posted...it's "toy ship" resolution - so inside a bottle it's fine, but certainly not sea worthy, let alone larger render worthy.  The ships that I've used in the other renders are the Smirking Mermaid from 3D Universe's Skull Cove.  Making my own ship really gave me an appreciation of how much detail and work the Daz Published Artists put into the things I buy.  Someday I will understand UV Mapping and unwrapping...but I feel I'll have to read a lot more forums, and beat my head against the monitor a lot more times, before I conquer that.

    As a bit of a test/self-challenge, I replaced all Published Artist items in the scene with ones that I made, or prims with surfaces.  Even the "builder" I dialed back to generic G3 Male and used the Daz default outfit.  Perhaps a more true test of my composition, but clearly suffers from the lack of details and the main character is out of character for the scene.  Here's the render for comments/discussion purposes, but I don't like it as much and will be going back to using the better quality items that real artists have produced...



    Also, I was thinking one empty bottle and the Shipbuilder with a ship in his hand, adds to the story.  Does that make sense?  Before these contests I never really thought about how the single image had to contain all the elements of a story.  I accepted the asthetic theory around ratios, lighting, etc and I've been engineering images by them more than telling a story artfully.  So. Much. To. Learn.

    ShipBulderNoPA.jpg
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    Post edited by yhzmurphy on
  • yhzmurphyyhzmurphy Posts: 434
    edited January 2017

    Here is the latest view from inside.  Most of my effort has been on the glass shader settings for the bottle to try to get the right reflections/distortion for the background to convey more clearly the situation (in addition to the model in the creator's hands and the other ship in a bottle next to him).  We'll keep plugging along...

    InsideTheBottle3.jpg
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    Post edited by yhzmurphy on
  • daybirddaybird Posts: 645
    yhzmurphy said:

     

     

     

    Love that you made your own ship!

     

    Well, not sure how much I love the ship - it's the schooner in the second render I posted...it's "toy ship" resolution - so inside a bottle it's fine, but certainly not sea worthy, let alone larger render worthy.  The ships that I've used in the other renders are the Smirking Mermaid from 3D Universe's Skull Cove.  Making my own ship really gave me an appreciation of how much detail and work the Daz Published Artists put into the things I buy.  Someday I will understand UV Mapping and unwrapping...but I feel I'll have to read a lot more forums, and beat my head against the monitor a lot more times, before I conquer that.

    As a bit of a test/self-challenge, I replaced all Published Artist items in the scene with ones that I made, or prims with surfaces.  Even the "builder" I dialed back to generic G3 Male and used the Daz default outfit.  Perhaps a more true test of my composition, but clearly suffers from the lack of details and the main character is out of character for the scene.  Here's the render for comments/discussion purposes, but I don't like it as much and will be going back to using the better quality items that real artists have produced...



    Also, I was thinking one empty bottle and the Shipbuilder with a ship in his hand, adds to the story.  Does that make sense?  Before these contests I never really thought about how the single image had to contain all the elements of a story.  I accepted the asthetic theory around ratios, lighting, etc and I've been engineering images by them more than telling a story artfully.  So. Much. To. Learn.

    I think you done a great thing with this testrender. Your shipmodel and the guy fits perfect in the scene.( I like that the shipmodel do not look hyper realistic, cause its a model^^.)

    The other thing,  it's interesting how a scene is changing while we working on her. First there was the witcher, who has brood about his past and now we see a young man who is indulging his hobby.

  • yhzmurphyyhzmurphy Posts: 434

     

    daybird said:

    I think you done a great thing with this testrender. Your shipmodel and the guy fits perfect in the scene.( I like that the shipmodel do not look hyper realistic, cause its a model^^.)

    The other thing,  it's interesting how a scene is changing while we working on her. First there was the witcher, who has brood about his past and now we see a young man who is indulging his hobby.

    Thank-you, Daybird.  I too find the evolution interesting.  I can't sketch things, or think them out in advance...I start and then it evolves as I change things that prompt me to change other things.  Who knows...given where it started, this could evolve into a kids tea party at this rate ;-)

  • dstuffledstuffle Posts: 38
    edited January 2017

    Thanks for the feedback earlier.  Here's a hopefully improved draft of the scene.

     

    High Noon - Antiqued.jpg
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    Post edited by Chohole on
  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548
    yhzmurphy said:

    Here is the latest view from inside.  Most of my effort has been on the glass shader settings for the bottle to try to get the right reflections/distortion for the background to convey more clearly the situation (in addition to the model in the creator's hands and the other ship in a bottle next to him).  We'll keep plugging along...

    This is awesome.  Now it feels like we are really inside the bottle looking out.  I really like this!  As far as using all freebies and base models, its an interesting exercise and if you learned from it then it was worth it.  I do know that most of the freebies I have, now that I have a (really) basic understanding of how things work, all pretty much get tweaked especially the surfaces.  Modelling your own stuff, its a great skill to have and the more you do it the better you will get.  The UV mapping?  I haven't heard a single person say this was easy to learn.  I think EVERYEONE struggles with UV mapping.  And for the other render I think an empty bottle would set the scene even more as he is working on a new ship

  • Kismet2012Kismet2012 Posts: 4,252
    yhzmurphy said:

    Here is the latest view from inside.  Most of my effort has been on the glass shader settings for the bottle to try to get the right reflections/distortion for the background to convey more clearly the situation (in addition to the model in the creator's hands and the other ship in a bottle next to him).  We'll keep plugging along...

    I love both views you are working with.  They each tell their own distinct stories and points of view. 

    One suggestion I have for you when you want to expriment with a different POV is to save the scene as an Alternate verison.  Either with a different name, ie:  Inside The Bottle for the alternate and ShipBuilder.  This way you can change the lighting and camera for each view point without having to change everything back. 

    If you have already done this then just ignore what I just said.

     

  • yhzmurphyyhzmurphy Posts: 434
    daybird said:

     

    First of all, thank you for the suggestions and tips.
    I try to do it as best as possible, but much does not work quite as I would, because I lack the necessary experience and the knowledge.
    I have reduced the light of the lamp. (I did not want to omit them.)
    Also, I tried to fill the empty space on the top left, without distracting from the main figure.
    In addition, I have inserted various small things to give the picture more life and dynamics.
    I am still testing various light and camera settings and I am looking for a perfect relationship between light and dark.
    I'm really envious of people who can eliminate all the annoying things with postwork.
    Since I am not at all aware of this, I try to create many things in DAZ and fail, because of lack of knowledge, often miserable.

     

    I really like the whisp of smoke from the pistol recently fired, and the flash from the other - nice sense of sequencing.  She's striding through clearing the place.  Also, it's been mentioned, but the moth on the light is genius.

  • Kismet2012Kismet2012 Posts: 4,252
    dstuffle said:

    Thanks for the feedback earlier.  Here's a hopefully improved draft of the scene.

     

    A minor detail and maybe something most people wouldn't notice but your horse in the background should be showing some interest in what is happening around it.  A loud gun has just gone off and this would attract the horse's attention.  Horses are prey animals and are always on the lookout for danger...even when they look like they are relaxed they are aware of their surroundings.

    I Google images all the time to try and get poses correct.  Here are some examples that will hopefully help.

     

  • yhzmurphyyhzmurphy Posts: 434
    yhzmurphy said:

     

    I love both views you are working with.  They each tell their own distinct stories and points of view. 

    One suggestion I have for you when you want to expriment with a different POV is to save the scene as an Alternate verison.  Either with a different name, ie:  Inside The Bottle for the alternate and ShipBuilder.  This way you can change the lighting and camera for each view point without having to change everything back. 

    If you have already done this then just ignore what I just said.

     

    Thank-you so much.  That's a very good point, and after struggling for a few verisons I did end up forking the versions a couple of iterations ago.  Plus I read in a forum somewhere that if you keep saving to the same file over and over, you may corrupt your .duf file, so I save under version names every few major changes so I don't lose everything. At first I was trying to do both points of views in the same file (and do keep both cameras in both files just to check every now and then), but they have diverged.  In the back of my mind was an animation of the camera pan and zoom from the first view into the second, but that's well beyond my experience and patience right now. Much of the minor changes in this round was synching some of the changes between the two separate works back into the other.

  • Kismet2012Kismet2012 Posts: 4,252
    yhzmurphy said:
    daybird said:

     

    First of all, thank you for the suggestions and tips.
    I try to do it as best as possible, but much does not work quite as I would, because I lack the necessary experience and the knowledge.
    I have reduced the light of the lamp. (I did not want to omit them.)
    Also, I tried to fill the empty space on the top left, without distracting from the main figure.
    In addition, I have inserted various small things to give the picture more life and dynamics.
    I am still testing various light and camera settings and I am looking for a perfect relationship between light and dark.
    I'm really envious of people who can eliminate all the annoying things with postwork.
    Since I am not at all aware of this, I try to create many things in DAZ and fail, because of lack of knowledge, often miserable.

     

    I really like the whisp of smoke from the pistol recently fired, and the flash from the other - nice sense of sequencing.  She's striding through clearing the place.  Also, it's been mentioned, but the moth on the light is genius.

    I agree.  Sometimes it is those little details which really add to the scene.

  • yhzmurphyyhzmurphy Posts: 434
    edited January 2017
    yhzmurphy said:
     

    A minor detail and maybe something most people wouldn't notice but your horse in the background should be showing some interest in what is happening around it.  A loud gun has just gone off and this would attract the horse's attention.  Horses are prey animals and are always on the lookout for danger...even when they look like they are relaxed they are aware of their surroundings.

    Just to share some experience, having spent waaaaay too much time around horses (mostly writing cheques while my daughter competed on them).  Even the most chill horse will move it's ears at least.  The ears on your horse are pointed forward - implying that it's both happy and interested in something directly in front of it.  Although that's the 'ideal' look, it's really hard to get a horse to point it's ears forward like that for a picture - it usually involves crinkling peppermint wrappers or tossing dirt or grass just off camera (been there, done that).  If it were tied there, the ears would most likely  be askew, both relaxed and listening for predators.  A loud noice would at least get the closest ear immediately on it (they swivel like little radar tracking dishes), even if it doesn't move it's head (Kismet is correct, but I have seen some "bomb proof" horses that are trained to not react like that to loud noises).

    I really like the other changes, and the sepia tone.

    Post edited by yhzmurphy on
  • yhzmurphyyhzmurphy Posts: 434
    edited January 2017

    When I said I wasn't working on this test anymore, apparently I lied.  The tank top was bothering me, both as being too modern a style for the candle-light work surface, and it made me feel cold looking at it.  So I knit him a sweater in Carrara.  It also gets closer to the colour scheme of the earlier one, and in the thumbnail the lighter shirt helps define things better.

    shipbuilderYouth2.jpg
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    Post edited by yhzmurphy on
  • DAZ_ann0314DAZ_ann0314 Posts: 2,783
    Shortcut said:
     

    I loaded up Victoria 7 and tried to see if I could replicate that lip problems.  I could even though my lights were a little different than yours.  The specular noise was a little bit different and changing the lights only made the noise on the lips move position so that wasn't any help.  I did a little experimentation with some surface settings.  The first image (VictoriaLips01) is what I was getting with the default surface settings.  The second (VictoriaLip04) saw a little bit of improvement.  What I did was select just the lips in the Surface Tab.  I changed the Refraction Index to 2 and the Glossy Reflectivity to 0.  I think the Glossy Reflectivity had more of an impact than the Refraction Index did.  Finally, I played with the Crushed Blacks and the Burn Highlights in the Tone Mapping under the Render Settings Tab.  I'm a big proponent for playing with Tone Mapping.  It can really make a huge difference in the final image.  I upped the Burn Highlights to .35 and the Crush Blacks to .30.  I think if I played with it more I might have been able to get rid of it completely.  You'll have to play with those settings and see if they help you out at all.  

    Frankly, I'm not that crazy about Victoria 7's skin enough to go further.  If it was me, I would change the skin completely for some other characters skin.  Most of them are pretty interchangeable within the same generation.  So, that's what I did in the third image (Victoria705).  I just changed skins and all of the lighting and tone mapping is the same as the second image.  The noise is still there but different and looks more blended in and natural.  I don't know if anyone else will have any further suggestions.  My best advice is to just play with it.  

    I can link you to this great post of Sickleyield's on her DA page which has a breakdown of the Iray settings and what each of them does.  I refer to it all of the time when I'm not sure what a particular setting in Iray does.

    @Shortcut   I posted my pictures along with a link to your pictures here on my laboratory thread.  This is the advice that I got for you from one of the vendors, @DarwinsMishap.

    The "noise" is reflection from the gloss and top coat from the lighting- if you copy the facial materials in the surface tab and paste it to the lips you'll have the same gloss/reflections from the skin to the lips.  You can lower it further if you need by incriments using the Top Coat which is usually higher on the lips than anywhere else.  Sometimes Top Coat and Gloss are both higher than the rest of the surfaces (barring eyes, teeth and mouth) to give that "She's just put on some lip gloss" look.

    So, give that a try and see how it goes.  DarwinsMishap does amazing figure creation and texturing so I would highly recommend following DM's advice.  Good luck.

    edit: I forgot to put the link to the post in my laboratory thread. Added that now.

    @Knittingmommy

    Thank you for all those suggestions! I'm definitely going to check out your laboratory thread.

    Attached below in order are outcomes of the different things I tried:

    1. The original with noisy specular highlights
    2. Glossy Reflectivity reduced
    3. Summer skin applied
    4. Replaced ‘lip’ material in surfaces tab with ‘face’ material
    5. Detail of ear comparing two different skin materials
    6. Whole image - new WIP

    Playing with the surfaces settings (glossy reflectivity, refraction index etc) managed to reduce the noisy effect but it was a bit hit and miss with all the different settings without knowing exactly what they do. Thanks for the link to sickleyield, there’s some interesting and very useful information there. I think if I had experimented more I could have better reduced the effect but I wasn’t satisfied with the progress I was making. The good thing about this approach was that it was localised to the specific body part where the problem was occurring.

    Then I applied Summer for Vic7 skin materials, which eliminated the problem entirely, but also changed the look of the image somewhat because it was applied to the whole figure/face. The skin was paler in the render, less flawed, but also introduced some other aspects which I didn’t like. It’s completely subjective and neither version is more ‘correct’ than the other, but as I started with the Victoria 7 skin on this figure I’ve become accustomed to its look. In using the Summer skin a lot of definition in the ear and the hand was lost, and some strange roughness was introduced on the neck which was noticeable in the final image. I simply used the out of the box settings and as I am discovering, each time I try something there are many ways to tweak and change things. My goal here though was to eliminate those noisy highlights in the lips, which it did perfectly.

    The last tip suggested swapping the surface properties on the lips from another part of the face. This was a great tip and produced a very noticeable result, mostly eliminating the distracting noisiness from the lips, so thank you to @DarwinsMishap for that.

    I’ve posted the new WIP image, including postwork as previously, from this render. An additional change includes placement of a leaf in the bottom left corner to bring down the brightness in that area and help keep the eye from wandering out of the frame.

    Black and White portrait of Woodland Elf

     

    That looks SO much better.  I'm glad you found some of the tips useful.  I'll have to let DarwinsMishap know that the last tip helped you out.  

    If you happen on my thread, be sure to check out the list of tutorials that have others and myself have posted to it to see if there is anything that would be of help to you.  I'm trying to keep them organized with an index on the first page about the 3rd post down.  We're adding more all of the time.

    Really beautiful. I really love this image. The black and white especially just pulls you right into it and the way its all done and the way the light is you especially get pulled into her eyes which for a portrait is an important thing and the subtle expression just adds to it even more. Really beautifully done. smiley

  • DAZ_ann0314DAZ_ann0314 Posts: 2,783
    yhzmurphy said:

    Here is the latest view from inside.  Most of my effort has been on the glass shader settings for the bottle to try to get the right reflections/distortion for the background to convey more clearly the situation (in addition to the model in the creator's hands and the other ship in a bottle next to him).  We'll keep plugging along...

    Im really loving this view. It has a real "Gulliver's Travels" feel to it for me. I love the detail and can really appreciate the amount of work that must have taken to set that up like that inside the bottle. Really nice work!

  • DAZ_ann0314DAZ_ann0314 Posts: 2,783
    dstuffle said:

    Thanks for the feedback earlier.  Here's a hopefully improved draft of the scene.

     

    This one is also very very good! Everyone is on a roll...you all are going to make me jealous! smiley I will agree with Kismet about the horse..it's a small detail but a lot of times its those small details that can make the scene that much more believable. I love the lighting on this and the color tone suits it. Makes it look very "old west". We are not to this yet, but it might be fun for you to look up some tutorials on using Atmosphere in Daz Studio. (We have some previous contest threads on it with some links and if you need some let me know as I know a couple good ones) but it might be fun to experiment a bit to see if you can get kinda low lying dust going from the ground. Not necessary just seems like it would fit well with the scene. Wonderful work! smiley

  • DAZ_ann0314DAZ_ann0314 Posts: 2,783

    Hi 

    After looking at all the comments here and other posts I went away and rethought my entry for the comp. Here is my latest effort. Please be kind I have only been using Daz for little over a week. I'm completely new to this.

    I call the render "Amazment". I used Daz3d and GIMP for post work.

    Welcome! You are off to an WONDERFUL start! smiley I really like the camera angle to this. The only suggestion I would have is to may add an extra light into the scene to help add a little bit of light to him. Since it is night you generally want to go for blue or grey light colors (cool tones) It will keep the feel of it being night time but still give some light so you can see the details of the image. If you need information on lighting we do go over that in the course of the Challenges (we go in an order and since this is January you came in right at the beginning) If you aren't sure on lighting but don't want to wait for us to get to it to experiment, check the threads in this forum from previous Contests/Challenges as generally they contain links to tutorials etc to help get you started using them. I also suggest Daz 3D YouTube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/WWWDAZ3DCOM as they have lots of great tutorials for those just starting out. If you have any questions, please let us know! And wonderful job so far! smiley

  • DAZ_ann0314DAZ_ann0314 Posts: 2,783
    dstuffle said:

    Thanks for the feedback earlier.  Here's a hopefully improved draft of the scene.

     

    This one is also very very good! Everyone is on a roll...you all are going to make me jealous! smiley I will agree with Kismet about the horse..it's a small detail but a lot of times its those small details that can make the scene that much more believable. I love the lighting on this and the color tone suits it. Makes it look very "old west". We are not to this yet, but it might be fun for you to look up some tutorials on using Atmosphere in Daz Studio. (We have some previous contest threads on it with some links and if you need some let me know as I know a couple good ones) but it might be fun to experiment a bit to see if you can get kinda low lying dust going from the ground. Not necessary just seems like it would fit well with the scene. Wonderful work! smiley

    Here is the link to that thread in case you want to play: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/115276/october-2016-new-user-contest-atmosphere-wip-thread/p1

  • DAZ_ann0314DAZ_ann0314 Posts: 2,783

    Hi 

    After looking at all the comments here and other posts I went away and rethought my entry for the comp. Here is my latest effort. Please be kind I have only been using Daz for little over a week. I'm completely new to this.

    I call the render "Amazment". I used Daz3d and GIMP for post work.

    Welcome! You are off to an WONDERFUL start! smiley I really like the camera angle to this. The only suggestion I would have is to may add an extra light into the scene to help add a little bit of light to him. Since it is night you generally want to go for blue or grey light colors (cool tones) It will keep the feel of it being night time but still give some light so you can see the details of the image. If you need information on lighting we do go over that in the course of the Challenges (we go in an order and since this is January you came in right at the beginning) If you aren't sure on lighting but don't want to wait for us to get to it to experiment, check the threads in this forum from previous Contests/Challenges as generally they contain links to tutorials etc to help get you started using them. I also suggest Daz 3D YouTube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/WWWDAZ3DCOM as they have lots of great tutorials for those just starting out. If you have any questions, please let us know! And wonderful job so far! smiley

    And here is the link to the last challenge/contest thread on lighting in case you would like to look at some of the links: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/70702/february-2016-new-user-3d-art-contest-lighting-wip-thread/p1

  • yhzmurphyyhzmurphy Posts: 434
    edited January 2017

    Here's the latest view from inside the bottle - for the first time in one of these contests I've resorted to post work in Gimp to remove some extraneous rigging (on this model I only have all or nothing visibility for sails, rigging, etc).

     

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    Post edited by yhzmurphy on
  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,437
    yhzmurphy said:

    Here is the latest view from inside.  Most of my effort has been on the glass shader settings for the bottle to try to get the right reflections/distortion for the background to convey more clearly the situation (in addition to the model in the creator's hands and the other ship in a bottle next to him).  We'll keep plugging along...

    This view is so much more intersting than the other. The other is too busy, while at the same time there's nothing going on.  I haven't made any comments on the other view as I don't know what to say.  This one, however, is the view I think ought to be worked on.

  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,437
    dstuffle said:

    Thanks for the feedback earlier.  Here's a hopefully improved draft of the scene.

     

    @dstuffle, this is a huge improvement.  Other people have already commented on the horse. I'm still having trouble finding your focus, because the light tells me one thing (the man who's been shot has more intesting lighting, while the shooter is more obscured by shadows than lit).  Those clouds are still distracting... but not as much as before.  The lines add significant focus and that both helps and doesn't, I think... because of the lighting issue.  I'd lose that blur/smoke, personally... It doesn't add much.

    What are you wanting the viewer to focus on?

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548
    yhzmurphy said:

    Here's the latest view from inside the bottle - for the first time in one of these contests I've resorted to post work in Gimp to remove some extraneous rigging (on this model I only have all or nothing visibility for sails, rigging, etc).

     

    Really loving this.  And that is what post work is for.  As you are learning studio, post work is for the things that you just can't fix in studio (like partially removing rigging when its not an option lol). Of course, you can use as much or as little post work as you want, but if you are focusing on doing it in Studio, don't feel guility if you have to use postwork for something like this. 

     

    dstuffle said:

    Thanks for the feedback earlier.  Here's a hopefully improved draft of the scene.

     

    Loving the sepia tone to this now.  It really gives it an old west feeling.  I agree that the long piece of smoke is a bit distracting but don't necessarily think you need to get rid of it entirely.  If its smoke from the gun, you could add a much shorter length of smoke or have some tendrils of smoke drifting upwards to indicate that the gun was just fired.

    yhzmurphy said:

    When I said I wasn't working on this test anymore, apparently I lied.  The tank top was bothering me, both as being too modern a style for the candle-light work surface, and it made me feel cold looking at it.  So I knit him a sweater in Carrara.  It also gets closer to the colour scheme of the earlier one, and in the thumbnail the lighter shirt helps define things better.

    The sweater fits better than the tank top for sure.  Now he looks more like a seasoned fisherman.

  • daybird said:
    magen boo said:
    Santa

    Mhh, for me this looks kind of strange, as if it were cut out of a picture. Maybe you should change the camera angle and insert a background.

    Thanks for the feedback.. Yeah was going for that look the picture can be used again just add a background Or some words :)
  • magen boo said:
    Santa

    That just proves that Santa is a dirty old man giggles!!!!

    What a great start to this render although it looks like it is a bit twisted.

    When I look right on at it it looks like it is melting a bit, did you ever see those 60's films where when it goes from one scene to another it has those distortions like wavey lines.

    Lol thanks, i rendered it twice once with iray then again with delight, then layered them in Photoshop..
  • yhzmurphyyhzmurphy Posts: 434
    edited January 2017

    Ok, here's an update from the inside...just more extraneous rigging removal.  I think this clears the view of the "Creator" and also solves for some hanging sheets that were attached to the now invisible sails.  I don't want to take too much of the standing rigging out, or it will look less boaty.  Thoughts?

    insideTheBottleRiggingPost2.jpg
    1200 x 900 - 741K
    Post edited by yhzmurphy on
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